If you have been at your writing, or whatever your artistic craft of choice, long enough, you will inevitably face the following annoying (though, annoyingly important) question: so…what’s next?

No matter the milestone you reach—no matter how many books you publish or TEDx talks you give or exhibits you display or awards you win or tickets you sell or followers you gather—after all is said and done and the confetti is swept away and the empty champagne bottles are tossed astrew, eventually, the quiet of endless future space will descend in around you and beg this one simple, maddening question.

Perhaps strangers will ask this of you, or fans or family, or you will simply find yourself asking yourself: so, what’s next?

Fear not, beloved, for here’s what. I came across an unlikely and absolutely brilliant answer to this question and it turns out that to actually find the answer we need to change the question. How terribly existential of us.

Eventually, the quiet of endless future space will descend in around you and beg this one simple, maddening question: so, what’s next?

I follow the refreshingly insightful and wildly entertaining Ash Ambirge, author, CEO, and founder of The Middle Finger Project, who has the cleverest, sexiest way of making sense of this inevitable crossroads. (I enjoy following successful entrepreneurs—and I’ve been watching Ash killing it for years—because I believe entrepreneurship is much like writing in that it is creative, innovative, out-of-the-box thinking, and you are constantly trying things that may or may not work.)

In her most recent article, Ash flips the question from “What do I want to do?” to “What do I want to change?”

And in that nearly imperceptible shift in how you ask the question about where you are headed in your creative life, or your life in general, your next step begins to come into much sharper focus.

Because as creatives, we are change-makers. By choosing what we want to create, we create the world in which we live. So…what’s next? Well, maybe start at the end and work backwards: how do you want the world to be different when you’re done?

Allison Marie Conway has been writing poetry since she was ten years old, and is now the author of two published books. Every Monday she sends out a little love letter to fellow kindred creatives. You can sign up to receive these, and find out more about Allison, at her website.